Rot

Author Comments

Anyway, Rot is kind of a spiritual successor to the Outpost games ( I'm a one trick pony ), but where we went dark and atmospheric with those, Rot is bright and really doesn't take itself seriously.

Is there any point to me explaining the features ? I mean it must have loaded by now. Ok, weapons to unlock / upgrade, outfits to unlock because who doesn't want to be dressed as a giant banana when killing zombies, and different game modes to choose from just when you were getting bored with the normal one.

This is our first large HTML5 game, and... well, it's really not Flash. HTML5 does some things better, but a lot of things worse.

Ok one last thing, you'll have seen the heavy handed Greenlight banner in the game. We're building a vastly improved version called "Rot Purge" in Unity for Windows / Mac / Linux. If you enjoy Rot please check out Rot Purge. Thanks.

Update: If the arrow keys are causing the entire site to scroll, please stick with WASD. Also right mouse button to change your weapon.

Update 2: I've gone back to the original speed to try and fix the walking through barriers bug. Also the magnet is more powerful now, so hurray! ( And let's see what breaks next. I miss Flash )

Reviews

This was pretty good, but could have been quite a bit better. Things I'd like to see:

1. I have no way of making "extra" money. I'm pretty much completely bound to one pacing, one character development path, and one playstyle. This wouldn't be so bad, except some weapons are completely useless(assault rifle) by the time you can get them, so forcing me into considering it the "best choice" and wasting upgrade money on it instead of something useful made me feel like I needed to restart. Leads into problem 2.

2. I can't restart this game. Why the hell not? Like you knew you should put in a save purge, you just didn't? It's very odd and there's no way for me to correct the mistakes I was pretty much forced into making.

3. There's no way that I could tell to figure out which zombies are pukers. I can't plan for them, I just have to dodge at semi-random times. If they flashed or something, or had some easily identifiable design, this wouldn't be bad. As it is there's just something that makes close-range kiting annoying, which means I have to make bigger circles, which means I can't utilize skill in a fun way anymore. It's lame, and it sortof breaks the fun part for me.

4. I don't want the only upgrades to be weapon upgrades. Let me make the guy himself better.

First the good:
-Fun game, great time sink.
-I like the pixel look. Makes it look slightly retro.
-Great progression scheme. I like the rank unlocks.

The bad:
-I prefer a little story to my games. Maybe throw in a small story that unfolds.
-Progression is a little slow. I had to play 10 days of game before being able to afford the next weapon, after unlocking all weapons. Perhaps using the secondary currency to buy weapons, while upgrades are coins....
-Along with the secondary currency, being able to buy upgrades to outfit would be nice as well. Bonuses to defense, speed, firing rate, etc.

Great job, can't wait to see more.

Side note: Penalties for dying are in literally EVERY video game out there. Quit your bitchin', and have fun.

I must admit, I didn't come here with the intention of playing more than a five or so minutes, but in fact, I stayed for at least an hour. I actually like this one and I think I'll check out Rot Purge as well. Might be a lot of fun!

The good:

Solid visual design. Voxel graphics usually suggest that the developer looks for simplistic graphics which are easy to pull off. This does not always yield a satisfactory result as developers don't always know the difference between nice, simplistic visuals and simply lacking visuals.
Fortunately, in this case, it can clearly be seen that actual work went into making sure the game looks pleasing while also using simple graphical solutions. Both the ingame graphics and the menus are rather nice.

Fun gameplay. The controls are simple and easy to remember and the player character responds well to the player input and these things can easily make or break a game. The first day/tutorial level gives a nice taste of what to expect and the game just escalates things from then on at a relatively okay speed. After saving up some money and getting a shotgun, the first possibilities arise to get a taste of the rampage mode, which gives a nice flow to the levels as more and more zombies appear on each day. The challenges are okay, while the harder level choices are clever and fun. I do like that the player has the choice to do a normal day to day level or the modified level at the start of each day.

The bad:

The unlock system.
The game does not make it 100% clear how costume unlocks work. First, there is the coin collection system, (more on that later) and the shop. The game tells the player that the blue coins can be used to unlock costumes. To be honest, I did not reach the highest rank ingame as of the writing of this review, so there might be for purchase costumes later on that I do not know of yet. However, for a considerable portion of the game, costumes seem to be unlocked automatically when their rank requirements are met. This devalues the blue coins considerably, as they seem to be totally useless for quite a while. Weapon unlocks are totally okay on the other hand.
While I'm at it, I'd recommend an alternative to the unlock system; achievements as unlock conditions for unlockables, retro style. This is a much more fun way to go about unlocks IMO, as the dev is forced to come up with unique achievements and let's face it, achievement hunting, within the realm of actually doable achievements, is much more fun than endless grinding for a fixed amount of virtual currency.

The blue coins.
As far as I am aware, these things can be lost as a death penalty. Which, given the above point about them being effectively worthless for much of the game, is not the best way to go about such a feature. The rank system seems to work nicely and some form of an experience related death penalty would be much better in my opinion.
Back to the blue coins; my other problem with this system is that it reminds me (and I am probably not alone with this) of the dual currency systems used by many free-to-pay type games which plague the mobile gaming market. It is not a big deal here, as there is clearly no such scam in the game, but it does give off the impression that Rot Purge might include such shenanigans and that is not a good way to grow the potential player base.
Still, this might be just me being way too cynical for my own good. Take this as a word of advice, something to consider.

Conclusion:

Some things could do with some polishing and reworking, but all in all, Rot is a fun little game and I will definitely take a look at Rot Purge.

This is why NG is my favourite portal, what an excellent review.
I've not touched any of the UI stuff yet in Rot Purge, partly because I hate coding it, and partly because I'm still not a 100% sure which direction I'm taking with it, and feedback like this helps a lot.

The "dual currency" was actually as you said ( You weren't being too cynical ;) ), I planned to have IAP in the game and it was going to be more focused for the Facebook / mobile crowd as I've never touched that part of gaming before and wanted to experiment with it.
I changed my mind as I didn't think I was in a position to offer good value content, and if you're just selling any old crap to make a dollar then you become like all the other companies out there and I really didn't want to go down that path.
The in-game shop is a really obvious throw back to that, I didn't remove it as some players like the choice of what to spend their coins on, but I very much doubt it'll make it's way to Rot Purge unless I can think of something cool to do with it ( Which I can't atm ).

Just to clarify, Rot Purge won't have any IAP. I wouldn't buy a game with IAP ( DLC is different ), and I wouldn't expect anyone else to.

Thanks again, and I do like the idea of achievements for outfit unlocking, I may steal that :)